Cumulative patch clusters come in from the cold

There’s long been discussion – particularly between support partners and EMC – about the rather cloak-and-dagger way that cumulative patch clusters have been made available for downloads. Or not made available, as the case may be. Recently though, that’s changed.

Cumulative patch clusters, if you’re not aware, are collections of patches to individual releases that effectively form a sub release. So considering NetWorker 7.5 SP1, otherwise known as NetWorker 7.5.1, we have cumulative patch clusters that effectively form NetWorker 7.5.1.1, NetWorker 7.5.1.2, etc.

There are typically two types of cumulative patch clusters:

• Just the patches – i.e., the individual binaries that have been updated;
• Entire new installers.

Personally, I prefer the second option, even though it means a little more downloading – but others may prefer the individual binaries.

On the NetWorker Support page at EMC, you’ll now find Cumulative Patch (aka Fix) Downloads available:

Now, I wouldn’t recommend that this should be considered open slather to just go and install every new cumulative patch cluster as it comes out – instead, I’d strongly advocate using the public availability of these builds to closely review the fix notes in each release and see if any of those fixes happen to match issues you’ve been experiencing but either (a) haven’t got around to logging a case about or (b) haven’t been able to resolve.

If they do, it would probably warrant considering talking to your support provider about installing the cumulative patch build in question.

As always, information makes backup administration easier, and knowing that these cumulative patch clusters are available and having ready access to the fix notes will become a very useful addition to the debugging and maintenance toolkit for NetWorker administrators.